Blasts From The Past

Published: August 12, 2001

Jêff Goodell's thinly-veiled attack on coal (July 22) has as its premise the notion that the recently improved economic fortunes of the industry are a result of some unholy alliance between powerful coal executives and the Bush administration. The more prosaic truth is that coal companies have become more profitable because reserve depletion, a severe shortage of coal miners (the average underground miner is over 50 years old) and more stringent environmental regulations have saved the industry from its tendency to mine more coal than the market can absorb.

If the environmental activists are looking for a conspiracy to explain why we are still ''burning rocks'' to power the Internet, perhaps they should look in a mirror. The environmental movement's relentless attack, in the 1970's, against further development of the far cleaner and safer production of electricity through nuclear power virtually guaranteed that coal consumption would increase, irrespective of who occupies the White House.